OVERVIEW

The cornerstone of the Carteret County Beach Preservation Plan includes a series of sand management principles aimed to keep sand within the beach and inlet system. This overall premise is coupled with a host of beach fill, beneficial use of dredged material, and inlet management projects that comprise a set of short-range efforts (Tier II) that are aimed to provide adequate protection until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) Shore Protection Project (Tier I) can be implemented. This management strategy is graphically depicted below and detailed summaries are available for each project by clicking your mouse on the links provided along the left hand margin or underlined in blue below.

View Graphic: Beach Preservation Flowchart

TIER I

The most fundamental and comprehensive project of the Beach Preservation Plan is the fifty-year Corps Shore Protection Project. Under this project, the Corps plans and implements a 50-year beach nourishment strategy that will encompass the entire Bogue Banks barrier chain. Subsequent, periodic re-nourishment plans are also incorporated in to the 50-year plan. Unfortunately, the winter of 2011 is the earliest best-case scenario for initial nourishment. The latest worst-case scenario for initial nourishment could be much later, and hinges upon the funding levels appropriated by Congress and the President of the United States. Given this relatively uncertain timeline, portions of our beach ecosystem, maritime forest, recreational beach and infrastructure would be severely depleted, or removed entirely, if other alternatives were not pursued.

TIER II

There are presently three supplemental projects that are aimed to restore/preserve the beach in the multi-year interim before the construction phase of the Corps' Shore Protection Project is initiated. These efforts include; (1) The Bogue Banks Restoration Project, (2) USACE Dredge Disposal to Eastern Bogue Banks, and (3) The Section 933 Project. The following map depicts the temporal and spatial extents of the Tier II projects.

View Graphic: Tier II Extent Map

(1) The Bogue Banks Restoration Project is a local initiative totaling approximately $33 million. The entire project consists of an ~16.8-mile stretch of Bogue Banks extending from the Atlantic Beach (AB)/Pine Knoll Shores (PKS) town boundary westward, to approximately one mile east of the present location of Bogue Inlet. The project, for the most part, is sponsored by the Towns of PKS, Indian Beach (IB), and Emerald Isle (EI) in conjunction with Carteret County. The project is also being constructed in three distinct phases. "Phase I" represents the PKS/IB Joint Restoration Project that was constructed in 2001-02, "Phase II" represents the Eastern EI Restoration Project (2002-03), and "Phase III" represents the Western EI Restoration Project that entails the realignment of Bogue Inlet and the use of the shoal material dredged during this realignment event for beach restoration along the westernmost 4.5 miles of EI. This project was constructed in winter 2005. The links above for Phase I, II, and III provide project reviews delineating design and construction parameters for each phase of the effort.

(2) The Corps' Dredge Disposal to Eastern Bogue Banks Project is part of the Corps' least-cost dredge disposal policy related to the Morehead City Harbor Project and is implemented at no cost to the County or local municipalities. The geographic range of the project is the Fort Macon State Park and AB reaches of Bogue Banks. Sediment that is dredged from the inner harbor is stockpiled on Brandt Island (located northwest of Fort Macon) and subsequently discharged ("pumped out") to the beaches every eight to ten years to provide accommodation space for future dredge spoils. The last pump out occurred in winter 2004-05.

(3) Carteret County is also sponsoring a USACE Section 933 Project that is implemented concurrently with annual maintenance dredging activities associated with the ocean bar reach, or Outer Harbor, of the Morehead City Harbor Federal Navigation Project. Similar to the Corps' Shore Protection Project, this project has a Federal/non-Federal cost sharing schedule for the incremental cost to place sand in areas that are not incorporated within the Corps' least cost disposal option (offshore disposal). Costs associated with routine maintenance dredging and least-cost disposal planning are a 100% Federal cost. The first phase of the Section 933 Project was completed in 2004 and placed ~700,000 cubic yards or dredged material along the shorelines of IB, Salter Path, and the westernmost 2,200 feet of PKS. The second phase was completed in 2007 and nourished the eastern and central portions of PKS while dovetailing into the easternmost extent of the 2004 Section 933 Project. Besides realizing the beneficial use of dredged materials at the Morehead City Harbor and incorporating sand management principles on a regional scale, the Section 933 Project is also serving as an insurance measure for Phase I of the Bogue Banks Restoration Project that was completed in 2002.

Perhaps the most critical shore protection issue for Bogue Banks is the current dredged material disposal practices employed at the Morehead City Harbor Federal Navigation Project. Since 1933, over 49 million cubic yards (mcy) of sediment have been dredged from the outer harbor and disposed of 1 to 2.5 miles offshore under the confines of the Corps least-cost dredge disposal policy. Each year, approximately one million cubic yards of sediment is displaced offshore. This one year total is almost the quantity utilized for beach nourishment in Pine Knoll Shores alone in 2001-02, or the equivalent of almost 67,000 dump trucks of sand. The consequences of poor dredged material handling have adversely impacted adjacent coastal environments by essentially depriving the natural sediment supply, thereby affecting the ability for alongshore transport processes to feed adjacent beaches.

In 1994, a Corps Section 111 Feasibility Report was requested by Pine Knoll Shores to determine if damages to the beach can be directly attributable to the Federal Navigation Project. Unfortunately in 2001 and despite body of evidence contained in the report demonstrating impacts to the ebb tide delta and adjacent shorefaces, the Corps determined that the "…shoreline change rates for the Town of Pine Knoll Shores were basically the same for the period with the navigation project as for the period prior to the navigation project". Therefore mitigation by the Corps was not warranted. Consequently, the Beach Commission retained Olsen Associates from Jacksonville, Fla. in 2004 to prepare a comprehensive report to critique the Corps Section 111 Report, delineate sand management issues, and prepare a series of recommendations. The report was completed in 2006 (see below) and is now the foundation of the Beach Commission's shore protection efforts.